


let's never stop starting

by statsmcbitch



Category: American Housewife (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, a meditation on belonging and wanting, aka the cambridge fic no one asked for, is the best sister ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29790240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statsmcbitch/pseuds/statsmcbitch
Summary: “Well, for one thing, where are you going to stay?”“That’s the best part!” Cooper says. “Now that I’m going to culinary school, my parents bought a pied-à-terre in Cambridge -”Katie’s eye twitches.(Or: Taylor chaperones a trip to Cambridge.)
Relationships: Cooper Bradford/Oliver Otto, Taylor Otto/Trip Windsor (background)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	let's never stop starting

**_monday._ **

Katie doesn’t like the idea from the beginning.

Even before Oliver opens his mouth, she can tell she’s going to hate it. He and Cooper look like trouble – but that uniquely Cooliver trouble. She can handle Anna-Kat’s quirks and Taylor’s well-intentioned but ditsy decision making. Cooliver is an entirely different level of trouble, ridiculous ideas wrapped up in the pretty trappings of Cooper’s wealth.

It’s the sort of trouble that makes Katie sit up a little straighter, listen a little more closely. Cooliver is smart enough to be tricky. Cooliver is tricky enough to be dangerous. Cooliver means amateur hour is over.

“Mom,” Oliver says.

“Mom,” Cooper says.

Katie says nothing. The general rule is to never speak first in a negotiation. Katie doesn’t even speak second, if she can help it.

Oliver, on the other hand, still thinks that speaking first means getting the upper hand. Kid is going to get eaten alive in the business world. “Jacob Jacobenson -”

“That can’t be a real name,” Katie says.

“ _Jacob Jacobenson_ ,” Oliver repeats, sliding a piece of paper across the counter to her. “Is speaking at Harvard on Friday. He’s a leader in digital transformation in the wake of 5G capabilities. It’s completely changing the landscape of business development, to say nothing of the implications it has for app development. I posit that attending this lecture would not only be an investment in my future, but an investment in my future and the future of Gyftee.”

Katie takes the flyer. Jacob Jacobenson cannot be a real name, and she’s determined to find trace of whatever Photoshop magic Oliver – “This _paper_!” she gasps. “Greg, touch this paper. No – no! Dry your hands first!”

Greg hurriedly reaches for a dishtowel, wiping his hands clean of the post-dinner suds. “Oh, wow,” he says, taking the printout. He balances it on his fingers, looking thoughtful. “That’s gotta be, what, 120, maybe 125 GSM?”

Cooper grins. “Impeccable hand-feel, Mr. O! It’s 127. This particular ream was made -”

“I feel better about you when you’re not talking,” Katie says, shutting that down, quick.

Cooper nods. “Understood, Mrs. O.”

Oliver sets a comforting hand on Cooper’s shoulder, face disgustingly fond.

“So?” he asks. “Can we go?”

“You want to go to this, Cooper?”

He nods again, smiling bright. “5G is awesome!” His enthusiasm is sweet. “I’m so glad even poor people can get it now.”

Sweetness gone. “What did I say about talking, Cooper?”

He mimes zipping his lips shut. He slides the imaginary key into the pocket of Oliver’s button-up.

“Sorry kiddo,” she says, setting the _127 GSM_ paper down. She means it, too. As far as things Oliver has asked for, this is relatively innocuous. “I have a meeting for Anna-Kat’s individualized learning program that night and your father has a council meeting.”

“I’d say I could skip it, but with the election coming up…” Greg winces. “It wouldn’t look good.”

“He’s right,” Cooper says. “Taking time away from your personal ambitions to spend time with your children is a show of weakness. You thought Campo Beach was bad? You’d never recover.”

Katie, Greg, and Oliver share uncertain glances, unsure if Cooper is being ironic. The kid doesn’t have a sarcastic bone in his body, but the alternative is almost too tragic for Katie to even consider.

She decides to ignore him instead. It seems kinder.

“Who’s speaking next month?” Greg asks, casting a concerned glance at Cooper. “Maybe we can go then.”

Oliver, too, has shaken Cooper’s words off. “Someone from the business ethics department,” he says, waving a hand. “I don’t care about that.” Katie doesn’t blame him. It sounds preachy. “I _do_ care about the effects of technological advancements on business in an increasingly online world. So I was thinking, what if Cooper and I went down on our own?”

Aha. There it is. Katie zeros in on Oliver, looking for any sign of insincerity, any of his usual tells. He’s unexpectedly open.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone to Boston – it wouldn’t even be the first time he’s gone to _Harvard_. School field trips to museums and monuments, day trips at Greg’s insistence, the occasional fancy dinner on special occasions. They’ve even toured Harvard a handful of times now – well, Greg and Oliver have. It’s sweet, really, how much Oliver loves just being on the campus, but Katie can never pay attention after the not-John-Harvard-John-Harvard-statue. She likes the story about students peeing on it before graduation. Sue her! The rest of the tour is just looking at old, boring buildings named after old dead white guys. 

She’ll take her entertainment where she can get it.

“And there’s an open house at the School of Culinary Arts on Sunday morning,” Oliver continues. “So Cooper can -”

“So now it’s a _weekend_ thing,” Katie says with a laugh. That settles it. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not? I’m ahead in all of my classes, I don’t have a shift at the help line until Monday, and I don’t exactly have a packed social calendar.”

“Well, for one thing, where are you going to stay?”

“That’s the best part!” Cooper says. “Now that I’m going to culinary school, my parents bought a _pied-à-terre_ in Cambridge -”

Katie’s eye twitches.

“- we can stay there!”

“It’s just off campus. _Both_ of our campuses,” Oliver says. 

How convenient.

Katie shakes her head. “No. You need to be here. To take care of Luthor.”

Oliver’s mouth drops open. “ _Luthor_? Six other people live in this household. I’m sure someone else can put food in his bowl.”

Yeah, okay, it wasn’t her best excuse, but she’d rather die than admit it. She doubles down.

“Can they?” Katie asks, arching an eyebrow. “Would you risk your dog’s life on assuming _someone else_ will take care of him?”

Greg has gone back to doing the dishes, but he chimes in: “You know what happens when you assume!”

Cooper looks curious, almost curious enough to ask, but Oliver quiets him with a hand.

“You’re really not going to let me do this?” he asks, voice hard as flint.

“Not this time. I’m sorry.”

“ _Unbelievable_ ,” Oliver says, rolling his eyes so hard he must black out for a minute. He turns to go. Cooper has the presence of mind to grab the printed flyer from the counter, giving Katie a disappointed headshake, before he follows Oliver down to the basement.

He’s too well-bred to slam the door, but the silence that fills up their absence is loud enough to make up for it.

Katie tries to go back to her blog, but Greg is thinking too loudly for her to concentrate.

“Spit it out,” she says, closing her laptop and turning to face him at the sink.

“I don’t think it’s that bad of an idea,” Greg says mildly.

“It’s not a bad idea Greg, it’s a _horrible_ idea. Cooper and Oliver in Boston alone? For an entire weekend? Think of how much trouble you and your best friend could have gotten into in a city like Boston when _you_ were seventeen.” A beat. “No, scratch that, you’re a terrible example. Think of how much trouble _I_ could have gotten into in Boston, with my best friend, at seventeen.”

“I don’t think Oliver is going to come home with a rap sheet -”

“I was a minor, Greg. The charges were _expunged_! Give it a rest already!”

“He’s a sensible kid. He wants to go to this talk,” Greg says, tapping the glossy print-out. “And God knows Cooper should probably _visit_ his school before he _actually_ commits -”

“A _pied-à-terre_ doesn’t sound committed to you?”

Greg grimaces. “I’m just saying, Oliver isn’t going to do anything that might jeopardize Harvard. He’s not going to end up in a police blotter.”

Katie exhales. He has a point. Still… “Oliver may be smart and sensible. But Cooper makes him _very_ stupid.” A beat. “And I can guarantee there’s nothing _pied_ about that _terre_!”

Greg frowns. “Actually, _pied-a_ -”

“Not now, Greg!”

He smiles, soft. Sets his hands gently on her shoulders. She makes a big show out of looking away, holding onto her irritation, unwilling to be settled. But Greg waits; he’s patient. It’s why they work so well – the years of practice don’t hurt, either.

Finally, begrudgingly, Katie meets his eyes.

“Look, Harvard or not, this time next year - Oliver is going to be away at college. He’s a good kid. They both are. I think they can manage a weekend away.”

Katie huffs, rolls her eyes, but Greg can see that it’s more performative than anything. “Of course he’s a good kid. He’s ours, isn’t he?”

Greg smiles, draws Katie into a hug. She lets herself be coddled, leaning into his chest. But -

“They’re still not going,” she says.

Greg breathes deep, steadying his resolve, but before he can say anything -

“I can go with them.”

Katie jumps. Greg gives a startled – and _undignified_ \- yelp. 

“Where the hell did you come from?” Katie asks. Her heart is beating fast. Really fast, actually. She should get her FitBit, finally rack up some points. 

Taylor calmly replaces the Brita pitcher and kicks the refrigerator door shut, making the whole unit shake. She looks at her parents, deeply unimpressed.

Katie’s glare hardens. Maybe she’s having a heart attack. That would serve Taylor right, scaring her mother to death.

“Well, when two people love each other very much -”

Greg – damn him, the traitor! – laughs. Katie glares, but he just shrugs. Katie doesn’t know who she’s more annoyed with. 

“It’s bad enough Oliver and Cooper want to go, I’m not going to send _you and Trip_ as chaperones.” She’s distantly aware of Greg saying her name, softly, but he should know better than to try to interrupt Katie when she’s on a roll. “I might as well send Luthor along with them for all the good it would do.”

Taylor is focusing very hard on screwing the lid of her waterbottle back into place. Surely it can’t be that difficult, even for Taylor. “Not me and Trip,” she finally says. “Just me.”

Katie looks at Greg, sure he’s as bewildered by Taylor’s sudden charity as she is, but he looks… confused? No. His brow is furrowed, and the way he’d said her name before, _Katie…_

He’s concerned.

Katie feels like she’s missing something.

“You know what, Taylor?” Greg says, smiling supportively, “I think a change of scenery could do you some good.”

* * *

**_friday._ **

Oliver doesn't believe in fate. He believes in hard work and ambition, believes good things come to those who say fuck waiting and make things happen on their own terms. 

But this, climbing out of an Uber in front of a greyed-out brownstone and following Cooper over the threshold, feels destined, somehow.

In terms of square-footage, the Bradford’s new Boston property is downright modest. Like most houses in Cambridge, it’s long and narrow with a small garden out front and rows of windows climbing up the front. Unlike most houses in Cambridge, it hasn’t been parceled into apartments and has a view of the river and the Boston skyline beyond.

Oliver knows just enough about the Boston real estate market to know that it must be worth the Ottos’ house seven times over. And Cooper’s parents bought it on a _whim_.

Cooper shows them around. “I was on all of the virtual consultations with the interior design team,” he explains to Taylor when she asks. He sniffs. “And it’s a good thing I was! They wanted to cover all of this -” He taps the toe of his Gucci loafer on the blonde hardwood. The late afternoon sun is slanting in just right. “With these awful, garish rugs. Do they think I’m a middle-aged divorcee?”

Taylor smirks but says nothing. She’s been uncharacteristically quiet ever since they boarded the train from Connecticut to Boston. She’d kicked back in her seat and pulled her hood low over her eyes, headphones in. 

Instead, the place is all Scandinavian cool, with just enough carefully curated clutter to make it feel homey. Taylor inspects a vintage polaroid camera sitting just so on a credenza in the front sitting room, aims it at them, mostly in jest. Cooper grabs Oliver around the shoulders, grinning a little too widely – it makes Oliver lose his breath, and when he recovers, it comes out as a laugh. Taylor snaps the shutter and they’re all surprised when the camera begins to print. 

He shows them their rooms. Taylor throws herself onto the bed, disappearing into a cloud of pillows and an over-stuffed duvet. Her room is beautiful, but cold, like something from a trendy boutique hotel. It could be anyone’s. Oliver’s, on the other hand –

“Do you like it?” Cooper asks from the door.

There’s a bottle of Oliver’s favorite mineral water on the bedside table and a spacious desk near the window, overlooking the front walk. The bookshelf in the corner is lined with books on economics, on business strategy, on investing. There’s a photograph, too, him and Cooper kicked back in the Ottos’ backyard, their smiles cool and relaxed and unguarded.

Oliver bites back a smile, thinking about vision boards, about his carefully laid plans and how easily Cooper has fit into them. 

“I’ll have to live on campus my first year,” Oliver says, turning to face him.

“Officially, anyway,” Cooper sniffs.

“Officially,” Oliver agrees. His eyes crinkle in a smile. “Yeah. I like it.” 

Cooper is particularly proud of the rooftop patio. Oliver doesn’t notice at first, distracted with the skyline across the river, but when he looks around for Cooper, he sees that he’s drifted towards the back of the rooftop.

The trees at the front of the house buffer the noise on this end. It feels like they’re up in a treehouse, hidden in the canopy, just him and Cooper. He’s seen enough maps of Harvard, can picture the whole campus from a bird’s-eye-view; he knows that Mt. Auburn Street is just over that way. He knows that it’ll probably be the most important street of his life.

But tonight, there’s Cooper, standing at a long line of flower beds raised to hip-height. “They’re self-draining,” Cooper says. “We can grow our own vegetables.”

Certainly by ‘ _we’_ Cooper means a gardener, because Oliver has trouble picturing Cooper with soil under his fingernails. But he’s game. He’s game for whatever, for anything Cooper wants. “Eating local _is_ the new molecular gastronomy,” Oliver agrees thoughtfully.

Cooper scowls, just a little. “Molecular gastronomy is dead. And if you ask me, it never should have been born.”

He’s still listening to Cooper detail the damage molecular gastronomy did to the culinary world as they walk across the bridge to the business school. Oliver had told them both that they didn’t need to come, but he’s pleased that Cooper insisted. Taylor had begged off – apparently the bathrooms are fully stocked with bath bombs, and she intends to make the most of having her own en suite soaking tub – but she caught Oliver by the sleeve on his way out the door.

“Here,” she’d said, pressing her phone into his hand. “Hold onto this for me. Don’t give it back to me, no matter what. I’m doing a cleanse. Don’t give it to me until I say…” she frowned, looking wildly around the room. “Goat ear cashmere.”

Oliver turned the phone over in his hand. A photo-booth photo of her and Trip was tucked between the phone and the neon yellow jelly case. “Okay,” he said, slowly. “But you know – that _does_ come up in conversation fairly regularly around Cooper.”

“Just take it!” she said and shoved at his shoulder, closing the door firmly behind him.

It vibrates against his leg as they join the throng of people queuing at the auditorium. An usher hands Cooper a program.

“Oh, dude,” Cooper says. “There’s a reception, afterward!”

Oliver had seen that online. “Invitation only,” he says, distracted as he glances around the room. There’s a good mixture of students in sweats and t-shirts and older people in slacks and button ups. As always, he’s glad he took Cooper’s advice and went with the sports coat, no tie. 

“You don’t just have an invitation, you have the golden ticket,” Cooper says as they snag a pair of seats just as the lights flash a few times. “Me.”

Oliver looks at him, flat, maybe a little bitchy. Tries not to think of just how golden Cooper is – golden hair, golden skin, golden heart. “We’re not crashing the reception.”

“They’re probably going to have cocktails with really lame, technology-themed names,” Cooper muses, turning the program over as if there’s a menu hidden somewhere. Oliver can’t decide if Cooper means it as an argument for or against going. “Quick – lightning round!”

Which – what? But Oliver Otto is nothing if not quick on his feet. “WiFireball.”

“Long Island IT.”

“Techs-on-the-Beach.”

It catches Cooper off-guard and he gives a loud, full-bodied laugh that startles the couple sitting in front of them and leaves Oliver smiling long after the lights have gone down.

////

“This is what I like about math, and by extension, technology,” Jacob Jacobenson declares from the front of the auditorium. “Everything makes sense and there is always an answer.”

He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, like he’s trying out some Bill Gates everyman thing. Oliver can feel Cooper’s disapproval from ten inches away. Everything about him is so painfully normal, it feels a little awkward to watch him pace back and forth across the stage.

“A life in the arts is fine. Literature is fine,” he continues, “but there’s too much room for ambiguity. You never know anything for certain. If life was like math, it’d be a much better place. I know what you’re thinking – there’d be no _passion_ , there’d be no _emotion_. It’d just be one big landscape of grey.”

Plus, Oliver thinks, Taylor would never survive.

“But we’d have answers,” Jacobenson says, a little wistfully. “And…”

Oliver knows what he’s going to say before he does.

“And life would make sense,” he finishes.

(Oliver really kind of hates math, but he knows what he means.)

/////

What people get wrong is that, for all of the snarky comments, when it comes to Cooper, Oliver does his fair share of following, too.

It’s easy to miss it – Oliver is the big picture guy, the one who took one look at Cooper Bradford and started drawing up a plan to keep him by his side. And if Oliver is the big picture guy, then Cooper has an eye for the details, those little moments that make Oliver’s plan worth following.

They go to the reception. Cooper talks them both past the TA posted at the door, all dazzling smile and impeccable social polish. The TA really never had a chance – Oliver can’t help but sympathize with her. He knows just what to say, knows just by looking at a crowd who to introduce Oliver to, knows just how to fade into the background so Oliver can shine.

It’s only as Oliver is tucking yet _another_ business card – people are legitimately excited about Gyftee, people who aren’t himself or Trevor or Cooper – into his pocket that he realizes Cooper has slipped to the outskirts of the room. Oliver has a minute of panic before he spots him chatting with a pair of underdressed undergrads who look just as awkward as Oliver feels – or _felt_ , anyway.

Because he’s got business cards from _interested parties_ , parties with offices in Silicon Valley and deep pockets, parties who wanted to know more about Gyftee, about ad potential and product sponsorship opportunities. Oliver makes a mental note to ask Trevor about getting a lawyer involved, maybe someone with an expertise in intellectual property rights.

He belongs here, even if he doesn’t exactly fit in. Not like Cooper does, with his easy confidence and million dollar smile. Cooper fits into any room he chooses, but he’s selective about where he belongs – _belongs. Longs to be._

Cooper excuses himself when he sees Oliver looking, meets him halfway. He has a bottle of champagne held tight to his side and a conspiratorial smile. 

“Champagne? Really?”

Cooper rolls his eyes. “Don’t get too excited. It’s Dom Perignon.”

Oliver quirks an eyebrow. “And that’s unacceptable because…?”

“Because Dom Perignon is for mistresses. Do I look like a side piece?” Cooper’s eyes are glittering in the lamplight. “You wanna get out of here?”

Oliver considers him briefly, but really, he was never going to say no. So instead, he slings an arm over Cooper’s shoulder, thinks about belonging.

////

“Can I tell you something?”

They’re sitting on the grass in the JFK Park. Oliver’s had just enough of the champagne to feel a little fizzy with it, and even though there’s a statue of President Kennedy looking at him with judgmental eyes and telling him that future billionaires don’t drink champagne in public parks in the middle of the night, Cooper’s head is tilted up at the sky and his eyes are starry, so Oliver stays.

“Yeah.”

“I keep thinking back to this day. It was summer and I must have been nine or ten. My parents took me to the aquarium and they gave me an ice cream cone. Anyway, we were watching the penguins and I was eating my ice cream and then my parents told me they were moving to London and I was staying in Westport. And I don’t know what I was thinking, but I threw my cone into the exhibit. It didn’t solve anything – it’s not like throwing a tantrum at the Mystic Aquarium was going to convince them to stay, but…” Cooper trails off slowly and doesn’t look at him. “The zookeeper came over later and yelled at me because ironically, penguins can’t eat ice cream or they’ll get sick.”

Oliver finds himself laughing at Cooper’s last sentence, at the way his eyebrow arches and his tone gets strangely perplexed. “This is what you wanted to tell me? That you secretly killed a penguin once?”

Cooper tosses some grass at him, trying to look stern and failing. “Shut up.” He fidgets a little, finally admits, “I don’t know why I keep thinking back to that day. It seems so vapid and inconsequential but… I think that day, before the penguins, was the last time I felt like I wasn’t holding my breath, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me.”

Oliver swallows, tries to articulate his thoughts through the haze in his mind.

“But this feels real,” Cooper says after a moment. “You, and me, and this place. It feels solid. I’m lucky to have you.”

Oliver stares at him for a long time, searching, but Cooper’s face stays strangely unreadable. Cooper has always worn his heart on his sleeve, emotions thrown open, confident of the safety net his privilege allotted him. Oliver had always thought that sort of fearlessness was just another perk he couldn’t afford.

He thinks about Harvard, about his dreams, about how he’s got just about everything he’s ever wanted - about how lucky he is that he _knows_ what he wants and he has what it takes to go for it. He thinks about things belonging where they don’t, like the lights of Boston glimmering on the Charles River like twin night skies.

* * *

**_saturday_**.

Taylor wakes up early and goes for a long, slow run along the river, looping back around Harvard square. She likes the old buildings and cobblestone footpaths. It’s nearly enough to erase all the bitterness of how Carnegie Mellon slid through her fingertips like quicksand.

She doesn’t think about all the text messages she hasn’t read; in fact, she only thinks of her phone when she’s standing in the annoyingly long line at a coffee shop, bored as she waits her turn to pick from the pastry shelf.

When she gets back to the house, laden down with pastries and coffee, Oliver and Cooper are in an animated discussion about some new watch collection that was just released. Somehow, Oliver still finds a minute to fix her with a withering stare and slide her phone – facedown so the jelly case doesn’t cause any friction – down the length of the dining table. She catches it before it tips over the end.

Thinks, belatedly, that maybe she should have let it fall.

“I can’t believe you went running without your phone,” he says. “What if something had happened? What if you got lost?” He shakes his head, looking deeply disappointed in her. “This? _This_ is why mom wanted to send you along when we had Luthor microchipped.”

Taylor curls her fingers around her phone, resists the urge to throw it back at his head. What part of _goat ear cashmere_ hadn’t he understood? She notices that it’s turned off or dead – a small mercy or kindness.

“What are you guys doing today?” she asks, taking her coffee cup in both hands.

“There’s an Off-White popup we might check out,” Cooper says, looking to Oliver to confirm, “And then maybe the aquarium?”

“Definitely the aquarium,” Oliver confirms. He looks down at his coffee cup with a small, private smile.

Taylor thinks the aquarium sounds like fun, but that smile sticks in her heart like a fishhook.

She heads south. It takes some trial and error to find the right T line. She steadfastly refuses to turn her phone back on, but she promised Oliver she’d keep it with her. It sits like an anvil in her jacket pocket, and she busies herself with counting the number of stops she has left before she has to get off.

It’s a weak distraction at best, but the Gardener Museum is better. She wanders the halls, sidestepping tour groups and impossibly chic art students sprawled around, sketching, and tries to imagine living in the building when it was still a residence. She spends a long time looking at the courtyard – through some feat of engineering it’s still the sticky middle of summer there, and the tropical plants are lush and green. She spends a long time looking at the flowering jade. It’s hard to imagine them in the wild.

 _Native to South Africa_ , its placard says. Glancing around for docents, she gently touches one of its waxy leaves. “Crassula ovata,” she whispers to herself. “Native to South Africa.” It feels important to remember.

When she finally – _finally, finally_ – reaches the second floor, she’s unprepared for how the empty frames make her feel.

The longer she’d stared at the triangle sculpture at the college, the more she’d realized that it wasn’t the sculpture itself that caught her attention, but what wasn’t there. The empty spaces, how the triangles framed parts of the college like portraits, but not _exactly_ like portraits, because those pictures could move and change.

“Like something from _Harry Potter_ ,” she’d said to her dad on the drive home.

His brow had furrowed as he’d searched for the words to correct her, and Taylor leaned her forehead against the window, frustrated. It hadn’t come out right. She has trouble putting her thoughts into words, sometimes. What she means gets messed up somewhere between her brain and her mouth – subject, verb, object, like scrambled eggs.

What she’d meant was that she could look through them each day and see something different; the picture was always moving, always changing. A million different lives playing out in that single corner of the campus. It makes her feel scared and hopeful all at once, all of that boundless potential framed by three simple lines. 

The empty frames are all that, and then some. They’re hung up against a wall, framing the ornate wallpaper and nothing more – and Taylor feels like the time she rode her bike into a stone wall. The bike had crumpled to a stop but she hadn’t, the momentum flinging her forward over the wall. This is like that in reverse; momentum destroyed, possibilities disappearing right in front of her eyes.

She looks at them and feels like she’s splintering apart into two different realities.

In one she’s twenty and dating a man she’s pretty sure she doesn’t love. Her days are sunrises and a blur of psychology books and silver spoons and there’s nothing she wants to do more than to lie down and wake up at twenty-seven with all of her decisions having been made for her. But she can’t sleep and spends her nights scrolling through airline fares, Trip asleep next to her.

And in the other, she’s five again, feeling the mud squelch between her toes. The rain tastes like the ocean, the earth is opening its gaping mouth to suck everything down, and gravity can condense the entire universe into her backyard. When she's five, she's not listening to people (even the well-meaning ones) telling her what it is she means when she talks, she doesn’t get in the car and drive to the Westport city limits and just sit there, hands clenched around the steering wheel, the highway a Hail Mary, and she’s most definitely not caught between two boys, neither of whom she feels certain about. She’s a pirate, an astronaut, a pop star, a doctor who saves animals in her free time, and whatever the hell she wants to be.

 _An object in motion stays in motion_ , she thinks.

She raises the polaroid camera she’d found in Cooper’s house the day before. The flash has only just faded when one of the docents is there, shouting at her in furious, hushed tones. “Ma’am, no flash photography,” he says, jabbing a finger at a small, tasteful sign that says as much.

“I was just leaving.”

/////

She meets back up with Cooper and Oliver for dinner at a glamorous little hole-in-the-wall tucked away just off Newbury Street. It’s hip enough that the Bradford name means nothing and tiny enough that Cooper knows there will be a wait. Cooper sends Oliver in to give the hostess their names, scouts out a nearby bench they can wait on.

When he’s gone, Cooper hands Taylor a small gift bag – sunglasses from Chloé, just the right amount of trendy, obscenely expensive, and perfect for the shape of her face. “Thank you,” he says.

She laughs at him, but it’s not unkind. “I know you haven’t given a ton of gifts in your life, but I’m the one who’s supposed to say thank you.”

“No,” Cooper shakes his head. “Thank you for being the best big sister I’ve ever had.”

Once, a year or two ago (when she thought she knew what she wanted, when she was so sure she was in love with Trip, when their whole family walked around with chips on their shoulders), Taylor had told Oliver, “This is why you have no friends.”

He hadn’t been able to shut up for the last ten minutes, meticulously listing and categorizing every last one of her faults, but at her venomous reply, he seemed to be stunned silent.

Even Katie, watching them argue from the doorway, looked startled – and maybe just a _little_ impressed.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Oliver sneered. “I have plenty of friends. And at least I can walk and talk at the same time.”

“You have meal tickets, not friends,” Taylor said slowly, spitefully. “You’re too desperate. _No one_ likes you, and the only one in this town who _you_ legitimately like is Cooper, and we all know that’s because -”

“ _Taylor_!” Katie said sharply. “Stop it. What is wrong with you?”

Oliver sucked in a cheek, his face tense beyond belief, his eyes raw.

“Get out of my room, Taylor.”

Taylor looks away, watches the traffic flow down Commonwealth Avenue. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I wanted to,” he says, and the way he sounds – so young, so genuine – pierces a hole in her chest. 

When they finally get a table, Cooper shows her how to properly dress an oyster. The first time she puts one in her mouth she recoils, disgusted, but it’s worth it for the way he and Oliver laugh when she sputters, “It’s like having a mouthful of snot!”

Oliver looks deeply betrayed when Cooper reveals he doesn’t care for oysters, either, but Cooper doesn’t backtrack. “I have to agree with Taylor, I’ve never understood the hype.” He waves an oyster fork around. “Oyster forks, though? One of my favorite pieces of cutlery.”

/////

“Oliver!” Taylor whirls around to face him. “Can you please be cool for like, _once_ in your life? These are the finest fakes you can get.”

Cooper laughs, short and derisive. Like he can’t help himself. “I’m _sure_ that’s not true.” His voice drops conspiratorially. “I once met this guy in Marrakesh who could give you a whole new identity in the time it took to brew a couscous. Passport, birth certificate, college degree. Anything you wanted.” He waves the fake ID she’d just handed him in her face. “I think he’d have something to say about _these_.”

Taylor ignores him. “I wasn’t planning on giving these to you until you graduated!”

“Wow,” Oliver dead-pans, examining his own fake. “I can’t believe you spoiled the surprise.”

/////

The bartender slides three beers across the counter. Cooper looks askance at him, anxiety written clear on his face – Oliver knows what he’s thinking, that this is something poor people should be able to do. But he knows, too, that Oliver hates opening bottles – dislikes the scraping feeling on his palm, and anyway, why didn’t the bartender get rid of the caps for them? Poor service was clearly on tap. Oliver sniffs as he looks around at the questionable patronage. It’s unlikely there’s much networking to be done in a dive like this.

Taylor doesn’t miss a beat. She scoops all three bottles up, held precariously between the fingers of one hand, and with the other, she taps a guy on the shoulder. His Celtics snapback is on backwards and when he sees Taylor, his grin turns lecherous as he gives her a once over.

She ignores him. Oliver watches, startled, as she bends, fusses with the guy’s belt. In his periphery, Cooper looks just as bewildered as Oliver feels. Taylor wedges the bottle up under the buckle and then, with a flick of her wrist, the cap pops off. It glints once in the light before disappearing into the sticky darkness.

“You’re like, the coolest person I know, probably,” Cooper says, watching in awe as she repeats the process for the other two bottles.

Taylor smirks. “I’d say thank you, but coming from you two nerds, that’s not really saying a lot.”

Still, it does nothing to dull the stars in Cooper’s eyes.

“Cheers,” Taylor says, holding her drink out. Cooper cheerfully knocks the necks of their bottles together. Oliver shakes his head – yeah, okay, maybe he’s a little impressed too, and maybe a little alarmed – but gamely adds his to the sorry little toast, if only to see the way Cooper lights up.

“Excuse me?” A girl taps Taylor on the shoulder. She’s holding an unopened bottle, too. Behind her, a booth overflowing with pretty girls with brightly colored drinks watch. “Sorry, I just saw you open that, and I was wondering if you could do mine?”

Taylor looks at Snapback Bro. “Do you mind?”

He gives her another look, takes a slow pull of his own drink. “Go for it.”

Oliver watches for a minute longer, then turns to Cooper, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to know.”

/////

Oliver hasn’t really ever been to a bar, has barely been to many parties, but the scene around him seems familiar, anyway. Girls with tops cut low leaning over whenever he talks, low lights playing over dark lined eyes, adding extra shine to glossy lips. There’s a dance floor and a DJ playing old hits mixed in with the top 40 rotation. The floor is sticky with beer and who knows what else and Cooper had gazed sadly down at his Gucci sneakers, saying, “They’ll never recover from this.”

He spies Cooper now, out on the dance floor with a pretty co-ed. They’d both abandoned their beers after just a few sips – Cooper swearing that drinking it was against the Geneva Convention – but he doesn’t seem to be dwelling on his ruined shoes any longer. He’s all awkward angles and too-long limbs, not fully sure how to move just yet but having fun, anyway. It makes Oliver chuckle, his head tipping forward enough that his hair falls in front of his eyes. Before he can brush it away, someone else is carding their fingers over his scalp, down past his ears.

He blinks and oh. Right. Carla. Carly. Carmen? Her lips are red, matching the nails that he now realizes are pressing a little into his forearm. Right.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, a curious tilt to her head that has her dark hair falling over a bare shoulder. She’s got a tan that makes him think of summers in the Hamptons but even in the warm lights from above has an orange fake glow.

“Nothing,” he answers finally. “Excuse me for a minute.”

/////

“All that money and you couldn’t buy any rhythm?”

Cooper turns. Oliver, beautiful, perfect Oliver, is standing right in front of him, the changing lights catching on his smile. There’s a shock of glitter across one of his cheekbones and Cooper can’t look away.

It’s in the Bradford DNA to like shiny things.

“Come with me.” 

Cooper nods, because of course he’ll go with Oliver. Why hasn’t he been with Oliver the whole night? Any moment away from him feels like a waste of time.

Oliver spins him around with a hand on his waist when they reach an empty spot on the dance floor and Cooper steps closer on instinct, if only to buy himself another second where he doesn’t have to look Oliver in the eyes. Oliver doesn’t mind the closeness, lets his hands settle on Cooper’s hips and wander back, pressing against the small of his back and pulling him closer.

Oliver moves like he’s made for this, all sultry dips and sways that Cooper, tall and awkward and sharp, attempts to mimic. It’s hard, frustratingly so, and Cooper stays tense and rigid even as Oliver melts against him.

“You’re thinking about it too much,” Oliver says. “Relax. Just dance with me.” He snakes an arm up and curls his hand across the back of Cooper’s neck.

Once, while on vacation in Ibiza, a DJ told Cooper that the ideal beats-per-minute for dancing was 120. With all due respect to that guy, Cooper thinks that’s bullshit - his heart must be going at least 180 BPM, and he feels lit up, the tension he’s been holding slowly starting to fade.

The beat drops. It goes one way and Cooper goes another; there’s a swoop in his stomach like he’s hitting turbulence at 42-thousand feet.

Oliver’s there to catch him, hand steady at the small of his back. “Relax,” he says, close enough that his cheek bumps against Cooper’s when he leans in to talk. “Stay with me.”

The movement of their bodies comes so much easier now. Cooper stops focusing so much on what he’s doing and just does. They’re moving in tandem, like they’re meant to slot together the way they do, and Cooper grins at how easy it all is with Oliver, how quickly Oliver can assuage his worries and set his mind at ease. Oliver has Cooper wrapped around his littlest finger: Oliver says dance, Cooper dances. Oliver says relax, Cooper relaxes.

It’s dizzying to think of having this forever. It’s all so tangled in his head. Oliver’s always been so steady, so patient, and Cooper’s just felt… buried. Pressed like there’s a fucking mountain on his chest, all the people he could have been – all the people his parents wanted him to be - stacked up like medieval torture, turning everything flat.

He doesn’t feel any of that now. Everything that hurts feels far away, and he feels light, airy. Like champagne stolen in France, like he’s got bubbles in his veins, tickling and sweet.

Like he’s got the person he loves most in the world teaching him how to dance.

His heart kicks it up to 220 BPM.

Cooper feels barely in control as he steps back, palms flat on Oliver’s chest to create distance; he’s certain that without it, without physical force, he wouldn’t have been able to disentangle himself from the magnetic hold Oliver has on him. Has had on him since the day they met. Oliver lets him go; the lights change too quickly for Cooper to get a good look at his face, his expression shifting as rapidly as the colors. Playfulness bleeds into confusion, bleeds into concern, bleeds into –

“We should find Taylor,” Oliver says. His face has settled on _complicated_ – guarded, but his mouth is quirked up in something of a smile.

Taylor’s not that hard to find, holding court at the beer pong table on the bar’s upper level. There are a handful of cups left in front of her, but on the other side of the table, there’s just one. Cooper watches her line up the shot, her focus narrowed on the cup. The next instant, the crowd around the table erupts in cheers.

Taylor falls into the girls from earlier like they’re her new best friends, laughing and hugging, tangling into one another the way only strangers in a club can. Snapback Bro ignores them as he fishes her successful shot out of the cup. He finally comes over for a handshake but Taylor steals his hat instead, slides it back over her blonde hair with a grin.

Oliver gets her attention and she comes to his side. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright, but they’re clear and she’s steady. “Hey! Are you two alright?” She looks at Cooper, eyes narrowed. “You have something on your face – is that glitter?”

“Do you think we could head out?” Oliver asks. His fingers twitch, itching to rub at his own face.

She looks startled for a second but recovers. “Yeah, of course. Just let me say goodbye to my new friends.”

They head back down Mt. Auburn. Oliver thinks he’s had a dream like this before, him and Cooper and Mt. Auburn Street, and it had felt like home. When he woke up, he couldn’t decide if Mt. Auburn Street felt like home or if it was Cooper.

Taylor grabs his arm, slowing him until they’ve fallen back, let Cooper drift a little bit ahead of them. Oliver watches him walk. He looks smaller than usual, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders curled forward.

“Is everything okay?” Taylor asks. 

“Yeah,” Oliver assures her. “We had fun. Really! I’m just tired. We’re not exactly used to going out every night.”

“It’s true,” Cooper calls back over his shoulder. “He never takes me anywhere.”

Oliver fights back a smile. He’s acutely aware of how closely Taylor is watching his face. He can’t begin to guess what she’s looking for, or what she’s expecting, but it must satisfy her because she nods, takes a few quick, long strides to grab Cooper by the arm and draw him back, too, until they’re walking three-across on a sidewalk that’s not really made for walking three-across.

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves,” she says with a smile, throwing an arm over each of their shoulders. She’s just short enough that it’s a little awkward, both Oliver and Cooper bending in towards her like branches of a willow. Oliver will never admit it, but he kind of likes the solidness of having her hanging off of him like that.

“Because I’m taking those IDs back.”

Cooper splutters wordlessly; Oliver yelps _what?_ She ignores them both. “You can have them back once you’ve graduated!”

“That’s so not fair!” 

/////

Oliver doesn’t sleep that night. He stays up to watch the sun rise, turning the evening over and over in his mind, his brain folding into Gordian knots.

* * *

**_sunday_**.

He feels, rather than sees, the moment when Taylor sits quietly down next to him. She hugs her knees to her chest and pulls her hoodie down around them so she’s cocooned up in a little parcel.

From the brownstone’s rooftop they watch the rowers skim by, here and gone in just a few silent strokes of the oars. It’s strangely meditative, every bit as good as the Headspace subscription he and Cooper share. Everything is quiet and a little crisp; there’s a fog clinging determinedly to the banks of the Charles, under the trees where the sun doesn’t reach yet. Oliver inhales, exhales. Imagines mornings just like this.

“I think I’m gonna break up with Trip.”

They watch her words, puffed into smoke in the early morning chill, disappear. Oliver wonders if this is the first time she’s said it out loud. 

He catches himself picking at the skin around his thumbnail. He balls his hands in his hoodie pocket instead. Keeps his voice carefully neutral when he asks, “For the TA?”

“No. For me.”

“What,” he says, dry. “Going out last night made you realize how much you wanted to sow your wild oats?”

Taylor makes gagging noises, plays it up nice and dramatic. “Don’t talk about my oats ever again. _No_. Well, yes, but no – not like that. Remember those girls I was talking to? They call themselves digital nomads. They work as virtual assistants and can travel all over the world. I think… I think I’d like to do that. Travel, I mean. Becca – look at her Insta.”

Taylor shuffles a little closer so Oliver can see the Instagram account she’s pulled up. There are pictures of Becca, one of the girls from the club last night. In one, she’s kicked back with her computer in Jackson Tree. The caption says, _working hard or hardly working?_ No points for creativity, but still – it’s a nice setup. Oliver thinks he can see Taylor there, or somewhere like it. Some sort of offbeat hang for his offbeat sister.

“What about college?” Oliver asks as carefully and nonjudgmentally as he can.

Taylor swipes Instagram closed. “I’ve tried. I just don’t think it’s for me. I mean, it’s interesting, I like psychology, but when I picture my future -” she shrugs a shoulder. “I think we both know I’m not gonna be a doctor. I just don’t see myself in a psychology _career_. Or any career, really. And who knows, maybe I’ll hate virtually assisting, too. But I have a good feeling about it. I think the freedom will be worth it.”

There’s a flurry of disgruntled quacks as a rower disrupts a flock of ducks that had drifted into the middle of the river. They flutter for a few yards before settling.

Oliver knocks his shoulder against his sister’s. “Good for you, Tay.” 

She ducks her head, but he sees her smile. “Okay, enough about me.” She pulls her hood up over her head. “What’s up with you and Cooper?” When he doesn’t say anything, she continues, “You know it’s okay, right?”

He rolls his eyes so hard his whole head goes with it. “You know, someone might have said that once or twice or maybe five hundred times. Or maybe it was lots of someones, like you, and mom, and the Uber guy last night, and -”

She hits him, a brutal backhand to the center of his chest. It takes him by surprise, leaves him speechless.

“Okay, okay,” he says, once the shock has worn off. He exhales, impatient and sick of people telling him things he already knows. “It’s…” he starts to lie, then realizes who he’s talking to. “Just hard to talk about.”

Taylor rolls her eyes now, and yeah, it’s definitely a shared trait. Oliver wants to be anywhere but here, sitting on this rooftop, having this conversation with his sister. “It’s hard because you’re making it hard. It’s actually simple. It’s you and Cooper, if you want. It can be you and – what was her name? Gretchen?”

“ _Gina_?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

“Sure. It can be you and Gina sometimes, and Cooper sometimes. Or it can be Cooper all the time, or you can find someone else, or lots of someone elses. Just be honest, Oliver. What do you want?”

The question leaves him dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open, at a complete and utter loss.

She makes it sound like he can do, or be what he wants. She makes it sound easy. Simple. Nothing in Oliver’s life has been easy or simple. Everything he’s ever wanted, he’s had to fight tooth and nail for. Everything he’s ever lost has had claw marks in it.

/////

Oliver walks Cooper as far as the main entrance to the culinary academy. Oliver’s a little disappointed – it’s a nondescript building a few streets over from Harvard, locked together in a row with other nondescript buildings. It doesn’t look worthy of Cooper, of the importance that it’s going to have in both of their lives.

He tries to keep an open mind. Cooper’s having trouble keeping the smile from his face and he’s rocking on his heels as he looks through the window.

“Meet back here at eleven-thirty?”

“It’s a date,” Cooper says, distracted. Seems to catch himself and looks at Oliver, then looks away, quick.

Oliver smiles, helplessly fond. “Hey,” he says quietly, waiting for Cooper to look at him. “It’s a date,” he repeats, soft but firm.

Cooper lights up like the Fourth of July.

/////

The line at the bakery is absurdly long – it’s a trendy place, all subway tiles and industrial lighting, and he knows if he went somewhere less Instagram-ready he’d be in-and-out in half the time, but it’s their last morning in Boston, and anyway, he can try other bakeries later. He has time.

He gets all of their favorites, even Taylor’s sickeningly sweet pastry, more dessert than breakfast, and holds the plain white bag up apologetically when he gets back to CSCA to find Cooper waiting patiently on the sidewalk. Cooper’s face lights up the minute he sees him and he gets up from the bench. The smile on his face is so wide and infectious, Oliver can’t help but laugh.

“I have news,” Cooper says. 

“Good news?”

He nods. “I’m going to open the first Michelin three-star restaurant in Antarctica. And then, I’m going to have a Michelin three-star restaurant on every continent.” He looks so happy and he deserves it, he deserves all of it.

Oliver laughs. “That must have been some open house.”

They take the long way back to the house, winding through Harvard’s quad, past the library and the statues. The grounds are still quiet this early on a Sunday. Oliver had fallen in love with Harvard over the course of one day, tagging along with Greg on a trip to view some primary source at the Widener Library. What he feels for Cooper is different. It doesn’t crush him under its weight, doesn’t paralyze him the way Harvard does, the way his future does. It feels like a fog settling, like sunlight warming his chest.

Cooper tells him more about the open house. He’s excited about the different programs, the teachers on staff, the opportunities to study in New York, Paris, Hong Kong. Cooper’s — happy. That's the only thing Oliver can think, over and over, his heart thrilling for it.

On the sidewalk outside of the house, Oliver says, “Hey,” and when Cooper turns, Oliver steps up close to him and takes his face in his hands.

Oliver’s heart thuds slow in the base of his throat. He and Cooper have been this close before, were this close not even twenty-four hours ago, but never when it has been so quiet. Cooper stands still, waiting, and Oliver leans down and when their mouths press together it’s…

Cooper pulls away after not long enough. “Is this okay?” Oliver asks.

Cooper just laughs, softly, and Oliver takes a breath and then there’s Cooper’s mouth again, soft but insistent, just the right amount of pressure. Oliver’s hand slides to Cooper’s chest and he parts his lips, lets Cooper lick just barely inside. Oliver pulls back and tilts his head so their foreheads are touching.

There’s an infinite universe of time around them and he could just stay – here. Something that had been knotted in his chest, for years and years, loose now—everything in him, free.

**Author's Note:**

> includes mentions of underage drinking. 
> 
> thank you so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed! i really wanted to write something small before the next episode, but this got completely away from me.


End file.
